In the millions —

Still going strong: Sony sells more than 7 million PlayStation 4s

But the company says it's having trouble keeping up with demand.

On Wednesday, Sony said that it had sold more than seven million Playstation 4 consoles worldwide as of April 4, according to a report from Reuters. Those numbers reflect a million-console increase from last month, when Sony said it sold six million consoles after the PS4's Japan launch.

The PS4 launched in North America in November 2013, and at the time Sony trumpeted that it sold more than one million units on day one. Today, Sony's representatives said that the company is having trouble keeping up with demand. "Although we are still facing difficulties keeping up with the strong demand worldwide, we remain steadfast in our commitment to meet the needs of our customers," said Andrew House, president and group chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, in a statement.

According to a VGChartz estimate, Sony's sales have out-paced those of Microsoft's Xbox One, which has sold about 4.2 million units.

Sony also said in its statement that it had sold 20.5 million retail and digital copies of software since the PS4's release. The company added that it's counting on developers to release 120 new titles for the PS4 this year.

Wow, great to see this kind of momentum! I'm looking forward to picking one up when Batman: Arkham Knight is released later this year. Having trouble keeping up with demand is definitely preferable to not facing the demand.

Early console sales don't necessarily reflect long-term trends. But at what point does Sony's lead become an indication of long-lasting dominance? It seems to be heading for a 2:1 advantage in its installed base.

Considering the growing gap between Xbox one and PS4 sales, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Xbox One spec bump edition in a couple of years..

I would. A set spec sheet is literally the most important part of a platform. It's the reason why the PS3's change in form factor wasn't also when they opted to increase the RAM or anything like that. You won't ever see a spec bump outside of HDD, which doesn't really count. The next time we get new XBox specs, it will be the successor to the XBox One.

I recently bought a PS4. My main complaint is that they haven't made PSOne Classics available on the platform yet. That was 50% of my PS3 usage, and I need them.

As it is they're caught in a sort of catch-22. A lot of people are avoiding buying the console because there aren't many good games, but a lot of major studios are holding off on producing for the console until the userbase is larger. Bringing the Classics line to the PS4 would be a big step towards fixing this problem (and while they're at it, they can bring us some PS2 goodness too).

For all the crap the ps3 went through in it's first year or two - look at what happened once it was A) cheaper and B) actually had a few great games. It was an amazing turnaround, but even then it took YEARS to reach the x360 install base.

With that in mind, I would not count the Xbox One out, as some are want to do.

Also - about X1 - even though is sort of is already (to some degree) - expect MS to officially cut the price of the One to $399.99 at E3. As long as they also delivery on the promise of packing the show full of games, and they are mostly good, expect a healthy sales bump. Halo 5 looking great + $399.99 is really all they need.

I recently bought a PS4. My main complaint is that they haven't made PSOne Classics available on the platform yet. That was 50% of my PS3 usage, and I need them.

As it is they're caught in a sort of catch-22. A lot of people are avoiding buying the console because there aren't many good games, but a lot of major studios are holding off on producing for the console until the userbase is larger. Bringing the Classics line to the PS4 would be a big step towards fixing this problem (and while they're at it, they can bring us some PS2 goodness too).

I don't think there are really a "lot" of people holding off on buying the PS4. They're still having trouble meeting demand, and have sold over seven million units. The console is selling quite well, by any reasonable metric.

Based on that, and the fact it's already the sales leader (for now) for this generation, and the fact that there are many publishers who make a tremendous amount of money off console gaming, I would also disagree with your assertion that there exists any kind of catch-22. There are plenty of publishers developing titles for the PS4. It just takes time.

That said, I would love to see PS1 and PS2 games made compatible with this system.

As it is they're caught in a sort of catch-22. A lot of people are avoiding buying the console because there aren't many good games, but a lot of major studios are holding off on producing for the console until the userbase is larger.

I recently bought a PS4. My main complaint is that they haven't made PSOne Classics available on the platform yet. That was 50% of my PS3 usage, and I need them.

As it is they're caught in a sort of catch-22. A lot of people are avoiding buying the console because there aren't many good games, but a lot of major studios are holding off on producing for the console until the userbase is larger. Bringing the Classics line to the PS4 would be a big step towards fixing this problem (and while they're at it, they can bring us some PS2 goodness too).

I don't think there are really a "lot" of people holding off on buying the PS4. They're still having trouble meeting demand, and have sold over seven million units. The console is selling quite well, by any reasonable metric.

Based on that, and the fact it's already the sales leader (for now) for this generation, and the fact that there are many publishers who make a tremendous amount of money off console gaming, I would also disagree with your assertion that there exists any kind of catch-22. There are plenty of publishers developing titles for the PS4. It just takes time.

That said, I would love to see PS1 and PS2 games made compatible with this system.

I was referring more to major PS4 exclusives. As it is most of the good games are being released on both the PS3 and the PS4. We won't see too many of those til there's a much larger install base.

The amazing thing to me is that there really aren't many titles available for either system and there's no BC, but both are selling good-to-great. I was very tempted at Target last week by the bundle offer of the XboxOne, Titanfall free download and a year of Gold for $449, but I ended up passing because I can't dump any existing consoles from my cabinet, and my TV is out of HDMI slots. I'm not ready to replace a perfectly good 40" 1080p TV to make it work. The limited amount of titles means many of my favorite games are still on the 360, and I have to keep my 360 to play them. I guess I'm a bit surprised at how many people are ready for the next generation already. Combined we're well over 10M consoles.

Everyone should keep in mind, VGChartz has already been debunked by multiple sites and forums as a reliable source of anything related to video game sales. They strongly play the "guesstimation" game and tend to come up with their own numbers when they have insufficient data to play with.

The last official numbers from Microsoft is 3.9m, launch - Dec 31st. I highly doubt they sold only 300k units over 3 months.

VGChartz is good for older, historic data when numbers are released. They are not very good at estimating or keeping their estimates up to date to current trends. Their Killzone: Shadow Fall says 1.6m while Sony already said it passed 2m in Jan. Edit: (All I can think is if they do not account for digital sales and only retail, which the NPD always underestimates when predicting total sales. Does not explain the lack of not updating One numbers)

MS earnings call is April 24th. They will reveal their numbers then or release them early.

Completely underwhelmed by this generation of consoles. PS4 is the better choice, but still, the Sony and Microsoft boxes not capable of the graphical leap we have come to expect with each new generation.

This is some good momentum for Sony, but I think there's still more pent-up demand to be filled before we start comparing sales ratios. At least here in Canada, PS4's have been very difficult to find on a shelf.

VGChartz is good for older, historic data when numbers are released. They are not very good at estimating or keeping their estimates up to date to current trends. Their Killzone: Shadow Fall says 1.6m while Sony already said it passed 2m in Jan.

Actually, the VGChartz number was only referring to physical copies sold while the Sony number was referring to physical and digital combined. With that in mind, it wasn't that far off.

The last official numbers from Microsoft is 3.9m, launch - Dec 31st. I highly doubt they sold only 300k units over 3 months.

Microsoft shipped 3.9 million units to retail as of Dec 31st. There was about 900,000 units in the global retail channel at that time. They may have sold through that amount by now, but that still leaves the shipments for Jan, Feb and March.

Xbox One just has a very tricky memory configuration for devs to overcome to achieve that resolution.

Hah! Yeah, I guess you could call XB1 only having 68.3 GB/s memory bandwidth compared to 176.0 GB/s on the PS4 a "tricky memory configuration for devs to overcome". But when you combine that with their 768 vs 1152 GPU cores, I'd call it "screwed".

VGChartz is good for older, historic data when numbers are released. They are not very good at estimating or keeping their estimates up to date to current trends. Their Killzone: Shadow Fall says 1.6m while Sony already said it passed 2m in Jan.

Actually, the VGChartz number was only referring to physical copies sold while the Sony number was referring to physical and digital combined. With that in mind, it wasn't that far off.

Heh, yah I updated my thoughts before you saw it! Game estimates make more sense for retail only. And usually is what third party estimates are.

Their One estimates need to clearly state they have not been updated in months. Not sure why they do not do that.

The last official numbers from Microsoft is 3.9m, launch - Dec 31st. I highly doubt they sold only 300k units over 3 months.

Microsoft shipped 3.9 million units to retail as of Dec 31st. There was about 900,000 units in the global retail channel at that time. They may have sold through that amount by now, but that still leaves the shipments for Jan, Feb and March.

And the fancy Titanfall bundle boxes did not show up until Feb at the earliest.

Completely underwhelmed by this generation of consoles. PS4 is the better choice, but still, the Sony and Microsoft boxes not capable of the graphical leap we have come to expect with each new generation.

Ultra HD/4k is already here and the Xbox is doing 900P, what a joke.

I think I need to. Drag out those first year games for ps3 and 360 again. Put besides last of US the difference is quite funny. And how many people have a 4k TV?

Regardless of its shortcomings compared to the PS4, the XO still has plenty of power to be able to achieve 1080p, which explains why a handful of devs have already been able to accomplish it.

Well, sure, but you can just keep removing features from any game until it looks like Pong or something from the 90's in order to work at 1080p.

The real point is that if developers are being forced to down-res due to struggling to keep today's games in tact on that hardware, then I expect you're gonna be pretty disappointed as we near the end of this console's life-cycle.

Regardless of its shortcomings compared to the PS4, the XO still has plenty of power to be able to achieve 1080p, which explains why a handful of devs have already been able to accomplish it.

Well, sure, but you can just keep removing features from any game until it looks like Pong or something from the 90's in order to work at 1080p.

The real point is that if developers are being forced to down-res due to struggling to keep today's games in tact on that hardware, then I expect you're gonna be pretty disappointed as we near the end of this console's life-cycle.

I'm personally not going to be disappointed at all considering I've invested in all three current gen consoles. That way I won't be left out of anything, and it saves me the trouble of having to pick sides.

And the fancy Titanfall bundle boxes did not show up until Feb at the earliest.

I'm actually really curious to see how many copies of Titanfall sold, but not because of the PS4, I'd like to see how the Xbox One version did against the PC. Now that consoles are essentially mid-range PCs with controllers, obviously consoles will still win sales battles, but is there going to be a trend pushing back in the PC direction?

Fun thought experiment: As for the PS4, at least in Europe, Microsoft said Titanfall doubled Xbox One sales. Sony has also said that Infamous:Second Son doubled PS4 sales in Europe... so if the PS4 was already outselling the Xbox One, doubling the sales of both should actually double the PS4's unit sales lead there too.

But no one will know anything about Xbox One sales until Microsoft shares numbers and that probably won't be until e3.

No way bro. Kinect is an INTEGRAL part of the XB1 experience. It's what differentiates the console from the PS4, and we should be happy the MS is forcing the issue because it means that developers are going to go out of their way to target it. Those killer games for Kinect are going to be along any day now! By the way, I should remind you that the original Kinect was the fastest selling piece of hardware of all time, and I would also like to say that I love the voice commands which my family makes extensive use of ....

^^^ Statistics indicate, with 90% probability, that anyone who made the above argument also heralded the Ouya as a groundbreaking revolution to the gaming world.

Everyone should keep in mind, VGChartz has already been debunked by multiple sites and forums as a reliable source of anything related to video game sales. They strongly play the "guesstimation" game and tend to come up with their own numbers when they have insufficient data to play with.

What sites? Forums? I've seen this claim before, but there only seems to be speculation that vgcharts is speculating. They probably are, but I'm guessing their guess is a better speculation than I guess the next guesser could speculate. Anecdotally speaking, of course.